


Fictober 2020

by isthisenoughorcanwegohigher



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Original Work, The Magicians (TV), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types
Genre: Fictober 2020, fictober '20
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:43:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26763034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isthisenoughorcanwegohigher/pseuds/isthisenoughorcanwegohigher
Summary: Back at it again with the fictober prompts! Now with a 2020 spin.





	Fictober 2020

**Author's Note:**

> Day one prompt: “no, come back!”
> 
> original work featuring first person POV and three children characters.

I’m standing in a dimly lit room. It should be chilly, damp, perhaps even a little unnerving. It is not. Despite the lack of light, it is pleasantly warm. I could stand here forever, I think. And I do. I close my eyes, not troubled to find out where the light is coming from, content to just enjoy this moment for as long as I possibly can. I know that good things like this don’t last forever. I also know, though I do not give this thought much traction, that I am not usually okay with just enjoying moments like these. They do not usually last forever, and so I rush through them, eager to get to the parts where things are hard again. Where things are cold and scary again.

The moment passes. How long it has been, I can not tell, and right now, I do not care. I feel happy. I open my eyes and am aware of the small smile on my face. It does not trouble me. I step forward in the room, focusing now on my surroundings. There are no windows, no lamps. No, the light is coming from two doors. They don’t glow, exactly, no, they pulse with an energy that gives me my sight in this otherwise dark space.

This is a dream, I realize, as you often do in dreams, and I understand that for this dream to pass, to either wake up or transition to the next dream--both of which I am reluctant right now to do--I will have to enter each door and experience what is behind each of them. I understand, as you understand these things in dreams, that it does not matter which door I pick. I will open both. It is just a question of which I pick first. Heartbreak or biggest regret?

And somehow I know this is what is behind each of the doors. One almost oozes with deep purples and maroons, a hint of black. Surely this will be the worst hurt I have experienced. The other is lighter in color, blues and greens and golds, but it makes my heart twinge and my palms sweat. Whatever I face after opening this door will be something I plead with the stars to take back.

Urgency now overcomes me. Whatever was keeping me in this room is now gone, and I reach for the doorknob before hesitating. I don’t know if I’m making the right choice, even though distantly I am aware of the dream state I am in, aware that there is no right or wrong choice to make in a dream. As if the admittance over a lack of choice gives something else here power, my palm grips the knob of its own accord, and I pull open the door swirling with blues and greens.

The room I walk in to is brighter, disorienting. I blink to adjust my eyes, and the action shakes my awareness just enough to make the transition easier. I close the bedroom door behind me. We keep it closed so that the oldest, Will, doesn’t get into the closet and find the stash of Christmas presents. There’s still about a week before Christmas, and Will has grown up enough to want to know ahead of time what he’s getting. We know he’ll grow out of it in a couple of years--we hope, and we hope he doesn’t teach his younger siblings his habit of trying to peek--but for now, the one hard rule we enforce in the house keeps him from finding out.

Closed doors mean do not enter without explicit permission. It’s something that I longed for growing up, even without a lock on the door, I wanted a closed door to mean privacy. Now that I have kids of my own, I try to give them a better childhood than the one I had.

My husband does, too. Both of us know the pressures we face, and one of his hard rules going into our marriage was that no matter how difficult things got, we would work them out. We would not separate unless it was the best option for our kids.

The latch catches, and I let go. My vision adjusts to the light, and I recognize the living room of our house, though house is a generous word. We both work hard in our careers, and could afford a house if we wanted it, but both of us know that a house would be harder to deal with than an apartment. We found a nice three bedroom when we realized we were having twins, and we’ve been here for almost five years now.

I see the Christmas tree, and the shimmering rainbow of lights. He’s plugged the tree in, and the kids are helping to hang ornaments. Will, the spitting image of him, right down to the way he frowns and clenches his fists when he’s about to cry, is laughing as he hangs one of his ornaments on the tree. It’s a motion activated ornament that sings Alvin and the Chipmunks when you wave at it, and he remains delighted by it. Laura and Alice are just old enough now to grasp how important decorating the Christmas tree is, but it means that they both fight over who puts the angel at the top of the tree.

Laura spots me first. “Mom,” she cries, and I frown, because this is wrong, “Mom, Alice won’t let me put the angel on top!”

Well, that just won’t do. “I have the perfect solution,” I say as I walk over, stepping close to him and letting him wrap an arm around my waist. This is wrong. “I’ll pick you up, and Daddy will pick Alice up, and you can both put the angel on the tree.”

“Ah, Mom, the savior,” he says, and I hear the teasing tone in his voice. It is familiar. It is warm, and inviting, and I want to be here forever. This is the life I wanted. It feels wrong.

“Hush,” I say to him. To the twins, I say, “Who wants to be picked up by Daddy?”

Alice’s hand shoots up. I grin and nudge him in her direction. Together, we pick up the twins. He plucks the angel off the coffee table, and Alice and Laura each hold a wing. We lift them up to the top of the tree, and they lower it onto the branches. It’s a perfect fit. It’s wrong.

“Well,” I laugh as I set Laura down. “It seems like the four of you have the tree well in hand, so how about I go make some hot chocolate while you clean up, then we can watch a movie?”

“Barbie?” Alice and Laura ask at the same time, eager smiles on their faces. Faces that I can not say no to. I should be able to say no to them. This isn’t right.

“Only if we can watch something else after,” Will groans with as much attitude as an almost nine-year-old can. He gets that from my husband, too. The dislike of movies that my daughters and I love. The attitude as well, I suppose. Though there is every chance he learned that from both his parents.

I just laugh, catching my husband’s eye. He’s grinning, too, but there’s something behind it that if I were to stop to think about the two of us and not the five of us, I might feel an odd sense of disappointment. Things aren’t supposed to be like this. It isn’t right.

“Go and pick one then,” he says. I resist rolling my eyes, but I do watch him for a minute longer as he helps the girls.

I shake my head. This is all wrong. I head into the kitchen and put the kettle on the stove. I relax against the counter, glad as I often am that we decided our family apartment should have a closed off kitchen, where you couldn’t see the living room. Our previous apartment, a little two bedroom, had been renovated so that the kitchen had become the second bedroom, and the landlord had made a smaller kitchen on the wall of the then joint living and dining space. 

My gaze drifts around the kitchen, and I find myself focusing on the cabinet beneath the sink. We only keep the trash there right now, not trusting the twins to stay out of the cleaning supplies. Those stay locked up in the master bathroom. A small smile grows on my face as I remember the games of hide and seek we would play with Will in the old apartment. His favorite hiding place was the cabinet under the sink.

A sense of curiosity grows within me, twisting like vines through my bones, entangling me. It feels wrong here. It has felt wrong for a very long time. I love my family, I do, but this isn’t how it should be. I wonder, as I can no longer avoid thinking about wrong things, if I can fit in the cabinet under the sink.

I shouldn’t be able to. I am a grown woman, it wouldn’t be right. I am too tall.

I pull open the cabinet.

“No,” I whisper to myself. “No, this is wrong.”

There is no trash can under the sink, but instead a dark hole. I want to crawl into it, see if it can lead me somewhere right.

“No,” I whisper.

There is no secret passage under the sink. There is no such thing as magic beyond the magic you create for yourself.

I bend down and crawl into the emptiness. 

When I can straighten up, I am back in the strangely warm room, and I am shaking. It is most noticeable in the hands that just held Laura up to put the angel on the tree, but Laura is not real. My heart pounds, my pulse races. He is not my husband. He never will be. Never could be. But I want it. Oh, I want it so much. The laughing daughters, the groaning son. The feeling of being warm in his arms even when the love between us grows cold.

I do not want to go through the second door, the one pulsing with reds and purples and blacks. I want to stay in this strangely warm room forever. I no longer care if I never wake up again, I just do not want to give up these conflicting feelings twisting my stomach into knots.

And yet I am drawn forward to the second door. The first one no longer glows, and the room grows a little darker the longer I wait. So I push forward, step into the red and purple light, and let the door swing shut behind me.

I dread what is behind this door. I already feel the tears pricking at my eyes. I already feel my heart swelling in my chest, threatening to burst through my ribcage. The pain of this already makes me want to turn tail and run. Run and hide, close my eyes.

It isn’t fear. I could never mistake this feeling for fear. No, this is the shattering of a heart, the death of a piece of the soul. It hurts with its familiarity, and it’s not a comforting hurt. I want to rip my skull open and scratch at my brain until it goes away. Anything to make it hurt less.

I stand now in a clinically lit room. It could be a hospital room, but it has the appearance of a vet’s office. There are two plastic chairs against the only blank wall. Opposite the chairs is a counter and some oak cabinets. There is a clipboard on the counter. I do not look at it. I know what this is, now, and I know that any moment now I will cry.

I will be crying when I wake up.

There is no door, but I hear one open and close regardless. No person joins me. No, instead, I turn, and there, coming up just past my ankles, is one of the most gorgeous cats I have ever seen. She’s a calico, white and black and caramel in color. She meows, softly, but in the silence it is deafening, and the next sound I am aware of is my gentle sobbing. I am not aware of falling to my knees, nor of picking up the cat and burying my face in her stomach, breathing in her sweet and milky scent. I am not aware of whispering her name over and over until it becomes a meaningless prayer on my lips. I am aware of the salty tears as they hit my tongue, and I switch to whispering that I’m sorry over and over, because I am getting her fur wet, and she doesn’t understand why I am crying. She just lets me hold her like I might never get to again, and she purrs, and she blinks her soft yellow eyes at me, and I am so happy that I am floating.

I do not want to wake up. I cherish the time I get to spend with her. I never want it to end.

I blink, and as suddenly as I was aware of the dimly lit room, I am aware that I have woken suddenly. The dream has no place in my memory. I recall none of it beyond a feeling so deep of regret and hurt. I realize my cheeks are wet.

I wipe away the tears. I don’t remember why I was crying. I don’t want to remember. All I need to know is that my heart is shattering beyond repair again, and I whisper into the dark, squeezing my eyes shut against the world. “Please.  **No. Come back.** ”


End file.
